Ruler Designer *UPDATED

$4.99 via Steam in the US. (Apologies to my many international visitors.)

The Ruler Designer DLC allows you to customize your ruler’s appearance, stats, and traits. It also lets you create custom Coats of Arms, which could be kind of cool for games when i am stuck with a boring one. Mostly cosmetic, with the traits and stats being the first gameplay altering elements in the Crusader Kings 2 DLC options.

House d’Hauteville’s Review

If you were hoping Ruler Designer would let you give your current ruler a shave, think again… Some additional info that wasn’t available prior to launch:

You can only edit your ruler at the Beginning of a new game. No saved game rulers can be edited. Not even subsequent rulers in a game you start using your ruler designer ruler.

Since you cannot edit save games, you cannot edit more than your beginning ruler. You will have no control over the subsequent generations of your dynasty.

You cannot edit historical figures. You may only introduce entirely new fictional dynasties where previously there was a richly historical one. Your newly introduced dynasty will have no ancestors, only yourself, a wife if you choose to have one, and children if you choose to have them.

There are three tabs for designing in. First is appearance:

The appearance pane lets you put together a picture of the ruler of your dreams.

Next comes the Coat of Arms tab, where you can select the layout, emblems, and colors for you CoA:

The Coat of Arms pane.

And, lastly, the attribute pane where you will choose all sort of goodies:

The Attributes pane.

On the attributes page, you are quite literally taking years off of your life. Each Trait has an associated cost, in years. Most bad traits take years off your life, while good traits make your almost created Ruler older…

Some traits with the associated age tuning figures to the right .

This method allows for some crazy character builds, to say the least.

Having 34 sons is easy with the Ruler Designer. FYI, he did die of terminal leprosy in less than a year.

Giving yourself the kids you want and counterbalancing those points with Traits that lower fertility (Celibate, Chaste) is a good way to get the kids for free… Wounded is always a winner because you take off years for a trait that will go away. If i remember correctly, patient actually takes years off and gives you several skill points in return.

Notes on the Attribute Tab:

While you can’t start the game as a currently non-playable character (Muslim or Pagan), you CAN start the game as a Heretic, giving you immediate Holy War Casus Belli on the whole, wide world. That’s pretty cool, i guess.

For every child you have, you will need to be one year over the age of 16. With a max age of 50, the most children you can bear is 34 (max age of 50 – min age of 16).

Children created through the Ruler Designer arrive on day one with no Traits. Not even an education.

Ruler Designer is an excellent tool for creating a ‘hard’ dynasty to play, but it has such a limited scope that i’m not sure it is worth it for a lot of players. If you don’t desperately want to get your name in there, or play Earl Stinkypoo, then it’s probably not for you. As it is, you may want to consider using it on an Irish Count, as they often begin the game in much the same dynasty situation as Ruler Designer will leave you with.

One Response to “Ruler Designer *UPDATED”

when naming your dynasty it’s handy to name them something at end of alphabet as first letter so you can find your dynasty member easily by sorting them in alphabet ie: finding every member not married of your dynasty including other court. I wish in the great house filter they added a ‘your own’ option…

Welcome

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